EVENING. Health.

Surviving Liquid Zinc

February 16, 1998|By Frank Gray, The Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette.

Not even the doctors had seen anything like it before.

When Nathan Miller arrived at St. Joseph Medical Center in Ft. Wayne, Ind., on the morning of Dec. 19, molten metal had solidified into jagged shards in his ears, eyes, nose, sinuses, esophagus, lungs and stomach.

His arms, legs and chest -- 61 percent of his body -- had been seared open by third-degree burns inflicted by molten zinc.

Even his teeth and vocal cords were coated with the metal.

It had happened in an instant when Miller, a tall, thin, 20-year-old, fell into a vat of 950-degree zinc on a production line at Steel Dynamics' cold-rolling mill.

Workers at the steel plant in Butler, about 35 miles northeast of Ft. Wayne, had been warned that if they fell into the zinc pot, they would almost certainly die.

So that morning, as Miller plunged into the 5-foot-deep pool, he thought to himself this is the end.

At the hospital, doctors feared the same thing.

They had dealt with burns many times before, but never with a person so severely burned who had also inhaled and swallowed molten metal. They listed his condition as critical and unstable and thought that he might not survive the night.

Miller didn't die that night. Day by day, he clung to life. Christmas came, and he persevered. Then New Year's. He continued to fight on.

His condition finally began to stabilize after doctors put him into a coma so he wouldn't resist treatment.

As he lay in the extended unconscious state, doctors performed seven operations to remove pieces of metal from his body and perform skin grafts. They pumped more than 50 units of blood, 30 units of plasma and 20 units of platelets into his body.

When he was finally allowed to awaken three weeks after his accident, Miller was stunned to learn what he had been through in the hospital, said his mother, Rosalie.

Miller said he remembers the day of the accident well. He and another worker were removing guardrails around the zinc pot in preparation for the Christmas break.

"I pulled my end up too fast," he said. "I lost my balance."

He remembers climbing out and wanting a drink of water because his throat burned, and he remembers the helicopter flight to the hospital.

Beyond that, nearly three weeks of his life remain a blank.

His only reminder of that time is a pile of cards, a large spiral notebook filled with notes from friends and co-workers who visited him and vague recollections of adventurous and scary dreams.

By the time doctors returned him to consciousness, he was improving rapidly. Critical changed to serious. He began joking with nurses.

Within two weeks, he was moved from St. Joe's burn unit and to another unit for long-term care before going home, possibly in as little as three weeks.

A full recovery might take up to a year, said intensive care physician Dr. Brian Youn. Even so, hospital officials are discovering a young man far tougher than they imagined.

Miller can smell, Youn said, even though his nose and sinuses were burned. He can see, even though metal seeped into his eyes. He can speak, even though metal coated his vocal cords.

Last month, wrapped in tight bandages, he began to walk. The pain is fading, and nearly all his wounds are closed.

He undergoes physical therapy daily, squeezing a ball with his severely burned right hand, and he takes walks every day, not painful, plodding walks but skittering steps down the hospital hall.

He can take only small sips of water, and he is still fed through a tube in his stomach because of damage to his esophagus. Surgery is planned to help remedy the problem.

His bandages are changed daily, a two-hour procedure, but visitors no longer have to don sterile robes, masks and gloves to be near him.

Miller talks of wanting to go back to the steel plant. After all, the job he had at Steel Dynamics was a dream come true for a man his age, among the highest-paying in the county.

For now, the dream job is on hold, and Miller's health crisis lingers for his family.

His mother has spent nearly every evening since the accident at the hospital, often sleeping in the lobby or in a nurse's dormitory room.

His father, Mervin, took two weeks off work after the accident.

But the family seems to have weathered the turmoil.

Emerging from her son's hospital room one day, Rosalie Miller seemed amazingly upbeat as she talked about her son's progress, the care he has received, and the support she has received from friends and co-workers.

"I never doubted he'd make it," she said. "He made it up here (surviving the 30-mile helicopter ride immediately after the accident). I knew there were a lot of people praying. He could have been blind. There could have been handicaps."